M0.5 module quiz
Ten questions. 80% to pass (8 of 10). Open book, unlimited retakes.
Answers are collapsed under each question. Answer first, then check.
Q1
GCP Spot VMs:
A. Have no maximum runtime; the 24-hour cap was Preemptible-only
B. Cannot be evicted once they have started running
C. Terminate automatically after 24 hours of continuous runtime
D. Are available only in the us-central1 region
Show answer
Correct: A. Spot succeeded Preemptible and dropped the runtime cap. GCP can evict at any time with roughly 30 seconds notice, but a Spot VM never reclaimed keeps running. Discounts run 60 to 91% off rate card.
Q2
The Azure deallocate-vs-stop trap is:
A. Deallocating a VM loses its attached OS disk
B. Deallocation takes far longer than a plain stop
C. A “stopped” VM that is not deallocated continues to bill for compute
D. Stopped VMs cannot be restarted at all without a full rebuild
Show answer
Correct: C. Stopping from inside the guest OS leaves the VM allocated. Only deallocation releases the compute charge, which is why the platform’s Azure stop path deallocates.
Q3
AWS NAT Gateway charges:
A. Hourly only, per gateway
B. Hourly plus per GB processed
C. Per GB processed only
D. Per concurrent connection
Show answer
Correct: B. Both components matter: the hourly charge makes an idle NAT gateway expensive, and the processing charge makes a busy one expensive. It appears on the ten-mistakes list for the first reason.
Q4
Azure Hybrid Benefit lets you:
A. Cut the compute rate on any VM without owning any licence
B. Combine Spot and reserved pricing on one instance
C. Move reservations freely between any Azure subscriptions
D. Apply existing on-premises licences to reduce the compute rate
Show answer
Correct: D. It is a licensing lever rather than a capacity one, which is why the corresponding recommendation is a reversible configuration change rather than a resize.
Q5
Cross-zone traffic within one region is charged on:
A. GCP only, never on AWS or Azure
B. AWS and GCP, but not Azure
C. All three: AWS, GCP and Azure
D. AWS only, never on GCP or Azure
Show answer
Correct: B. AWS bills about $0.01/GB out plus $0.01/GB in, and GCP about $0.01/GB. Azure stopped charging for traffic between availability zones in May 2024. Traffic staying within a single zone is free on all three.
Q6
GCP sustained-use discounts apply:
A. Only with an upfront one-year commitment
B. Only to Spot instances, and never to any on-demand ones
C. Automatically, based on how much of the month an instance runs
D. Only in the United States cloud regions
Show answer
Correct: C. No commitment is involved, which is what makes SUD different in kind from a CUD and why the two are separate levers rather than a single discount.
Q7
BigQuery has two pricing axes:
A. Region and total dataset size
B. Rows read and columns
C. On-demand and reserved
D. Storage and query (or slots)
Show answer
Correct: D. Optimizing one does nothing for the other, which is why a BigQuery cost investigation has to establish which axis is driving spend before proposing anything.
Q8
In a “primary plus tactical” multi-cloud pattern:
A. All three clouds carry roughly equal workload weight
B. Each business unit independently picks its own cloud
C. One cloud carries the bulk of workloads, with others used for specific capabilities
D. Workloads are duplicated across every cloud purely for the added resilience
Show answer
Correct: C. Provider weighting matters for reporting because a 5%-share cloud with a dedicated dashboard consumes attention out of proportion to its spend.
Q9
A three-cloud estate’s minimum-viable governance requires, at minimum:
A. Consistent cost attribution dimensions and a single reporting surface
B. A single console covering all three providers
C. Every tag, provider-specific ones included, identical across all three clouds
D. One cloud formally designated as the primary
Show answer
Correct: A. The minimum is a shared set of attribution dimensions (the same minimum tag keys and the same team values on every cloud, enforced as policy-as-code) feeding one reporting surface. Making every tag identical, provider-specific ones included, goes beyond the minimum. Without consistent dimensions, cross-cloud reporting compares things that are not comparable.
Q10
Which is a multi-cloud anti-pattern?
A. Weighting the reporting attention by each cloud’s share of spend
B. Standardising the tag taxonomy before expanding further
C. Keeping one primary cloud and a tactical second
D. Adopting a second cloud for one capability with no governance extension
Show answer
Correct: D. The second cloud arrives with a business case and no attribution, and it is invisible in reporting until it is large enough to be a problem.
What’s next
Back to Multi-cloud taxonomy.